24 Feb
2008
24 Feb
'08
8:51 p.m.
Yes I think it's much worse than that actually
who knows how to solder any more? for that matter, who sells parts any more? no one I can
find.
in the last few years they don't bother doing it any more, it's cheaper just to
buy a new "whatever" than try to repair an old one.
Radio Shack (now goine) in Canada stopped supplying parts ages ago (longer than I can
remember).
I remember driving to the US just to get simple things which were necessary for regular
use. (eg: barrel connectors)
good luck on that one now!
Dan.
----------------------------------------
From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:16:41 +0000
Subject: Re: anyone do vaxstation repairs?
_________________________________________________________________
On Feb 23, 2008, at 12:46 PM, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
I would argue that component-level repair _is_ rapidly becoming a lost art.
Apart from people on this list (and it's not even universal here) and people
doing related hobbies like vintage radio repairs, component-level repair
is alas very rare now. Even TV repairs (at least in the UK) have become
board-swapping with the advent of the plasma panel and LCD TVs (most
manufactuers of such sets do not supply schematics, and don't supply the
ASICs other than on the PCB).
What's more worrying to me is that the ability to diagnose a fault seems
to have gone as well. We've had this rant to many times that I don't feel
like starting it again...
anyone do or know of anyone doing repairs on
vaxstations?
is this a lost art, and I should just buy another one off ebay or what?
I'd love to find someone who did hardware repairs/engineering for dec
or still knows the stuff.
It's far from a lost art; anyone with reasonable electronics skills can work on those machines. The problem is the
lack of in-depth
hardware documentation like schematics.
YEs, AFAIK there were never published schematics for the VAXstations. And
since (from the few I've looked inside) they're full of custom silicon,
it's going to be very hard to produce meaningful schematics of such
machines.
For a machine built drom known components (ICs you can get data sheets or
at least pinouts for, etc), it's possible (although a lot of work [1]) to
trace out the schematics. But II don't fancy doing it for a machine where
the pinouts of the CPU and the main support ICs are unknown.
[1] That is the voice of experience...
-tony